<b>A date in the answer can flip a stale box</b>

<b>A date in the answer can flip a stale box</b>
09:48 UTC — We're hearing that on time-sensitive queries, a competitor holding the snippet with no year reference is quietly vulnerable to a page that states the current period explicitly.

The play:
— Query has implied recency ('current X rate', 'latest X limit') → bake the year/period into the answer sentence itself.
— Pair with a visible last-updated date near the section.

Why it matters: Google leans toward answers that look current on queries with a freshness signal. An undated incumbent reads as possibly stale, and an explicitly-dated challenger looks safer to quote.

Reliability: strong on time-sensitive terms, irrelevant on evergreen ones. Know which you're in. Watching this.